Susan Fuhrman Winter 2011 Letter

Published in 2/11/2011

The most successful New Year’s resolutions incorporate the
old and the new, drawing on past
lessons to realize future aspirations.

President Obama followed that blueprint in his recent State
of the Union address, calling for the United States to regain its status as the
world’s best educated nation, reassert its primacy in science and math, and
regain its creative edge.

At TC, we’re working toward those goals by revitalizing our
two great strengths: our unique blend of theory and practice, and our
unsurpassed ability to collaborate across a wealth of disciplines.

Teacher preparation – a controversial topic of late – is a
major focus of these efforts. Some
new approaches to teacher education in New York State and elsewhere divorce
teacher preparation from immersion in scholarship about education. In contrast, TC, like the best schools
of medicine and law, offers its students immersion in a continuous feedback
process in which practice flows from cutting-edge theory and theory is
repeatedly refined by the experience of those on the front lines. For example, generations of our students have learned
to use behaviorist methodology developed by Professor Douglas Greer to help
children with autism. http://bit.ly/eaKttP
The students teach in schools founded by Doug, as well as in public schools.
Their daily observations of the children then become the basis for ongoing
revision of the theory that guides their work.

We are also
applying that same dynamic to fashion new approaches to the teaching of math
and science.

As TC faculty
member Herb Ginsburg has documented in hours of videotaped sessions in pre-K
classrooms, children as young as 18 months old employ “everyday math” thinking . Now, Herb is
collaborating with an education software company to create MathemAntics, a
program that uses onscreen imagery to help very young children build on this
innate ability. http://bit.ly/hmhOQO MathemAntics also creates
a database of strategies for teachers.

In
science, two of our rising stars, Felicia Mensah Moore and Ann Rivet, are
creating new ways to make science more real for students – and teachers – by
using technology to better connect them with natural phenomena. In a course she
teaches to help elementary school science teachers brush up on
science content and pedagogy, Felicia draws on a NASA project that makes a wealth of data gathered from space
accessible to classrooms. http://bit.ly/gv31al
Ann, with funding from the National Science Foundation, is exploring ways to
overcome the limitations of table-top models that represent vast processes such
as stream erosion and the differential heating of continents and oceans. http://bit.ly/ifKz2D

TC’s Institute
for Urban and Minority Education, founded in the 1970s by Edmund Gordon, has
been at the forefront in integrating theory and practice. The Institute has
shaped new approaches to helping students in high-needs schools and
neighborhoods compete on a level playing field. In January, we ensured IUME’s
continued relevance for decades to come with the appointment of Ernest Morrell,
an eminent authority on urban schools and adolescent literacy development, as
its new director. http://bit.ly/ebDZ1K
Currently at UCLA, Dr. Morrell, who believes that marginalized communities must
take the lead in addressing their own needs, has taken busloads of teenage
students to the state capital to lobby for more state support of
education. Dr. Gordon calls him “a smart, gentle and powerful and presence
– a distinguished scholar and activist.”

Strengthening
education will require a quantum leap in innovation, and TC is right in stride.
In April, we will host a major conference at which a group of leading experts
will, among other things, identify major threats to the development of
students’ creative thinking, and how to use technology in the service of
individual inquiry rather than as a tool of mass culture. http://bit.ly/fJD6M6

We are also launching a new Executive Master’s Program in
Organization Change Leadership. http://bit.ly/gduirJ
The program, known as XMA, responds to a clear-cut need: Half of all U.S.
executives fail or lose their jobs, while 70 percent of organization change
efforts also fail – including 75 percent of mergers and acquisitions. The
inaugural XMA class will be comprised of mid-level executives from the fields
of law, health care, marketing and the nonprofit sector. The students will work
together on action projects, devising solutions to actual problems at each
other’s companies or organizations.

These students will also have a
front row seat to cutting-edge thinking in the field. A TC faculty member, Bill
Pasmore, has been named Editor of the Journal of Applied
Behavioral Psychology. The publication, founded in 1965 under the
editorship of another TC professor, Goodwin Watson, has published the leading
names in American psychology, including Carl Rogers and Chris Argyris. If
you’re interested in this program or know someone else who might be a great
fit, visit the program online at http://bit.ly/fiGjJx.

This fall, we will launch a new academic
department, Education Policy and Social Analysis (EPSA), that will further TC’s distinguished history of shaping
practice through policy research. http://bit.ly/h7uhoK
EPSA will bring together our stellar policy faculty from different areas of the College – field
leaders such as Thomas Bailey, who is currently leading an assessment of the
student experience at Michigan’s Macomb
Community College, a bellwether institution where President Obama first
announced plans to make two-year institutions an engine for economic revival http://bit.ly/gP3DOE; and Sharon Lynn Kagan, who has compiled perhaps the world’s
largest database on successful programs that help young children with critical
transitions such as leaving the home for preschool or moving from preschool to
kindergarten. http://bit.ly/fyffpK

The new department will provide our students with a more accessible and coherent
policy experience at TC. It will enhance our ability to provide policymakers
and practitioners with analysis of tradeoffs between investments in one sector
of education or the social infrastructure versus another. And it will broaden
our international focus, enabling us to hold more events such as the full-day
symposium we hosted this past fall with the University of London’s Institute of
Education, devoted to examining the rich history of education policy and
reforms shared by the United States and the United Kingdom. http://bit.ly/ifkwnA

TC’s future well-being – and society’s – depends on
our continuing ability to engage in such high-quality research. Three years
ago, our Provost, Tom James, created a seed fund to back innovative cross-disciplinary collaboration among our
faculty. The Fund has since awarded more than 40 grants of $20,000 each to
support a wide range of work. http://bit.ly/hwdzgZ

This
semester we are designating a Faculty Research Mentor, providing financial and
administrative supports and launching other initiatives in order to further
stimulate faculty research, which we will leverage into creating a more
creative, more entrepreneurial and better educated society.

Research will also be a major focus of Teacher’s College’s soon-to-be
launched capital campaign – an effort that will coincide with our celebration,
beginning in late 2012, of the 125th anniversary of the College’s founding.
You will begin to hear more about both the Capital Campaign and our 125th
anniversary celebration in the coming months.

Indeed,
our most important acts of renewal are those that ensure your continued
involvement in the life and work of the College. To that end, we have launched
a new online publication, “Views on the News,” that provides subscribers with quick, informative analyses by TC experts of
what’s happening, while it’s happening, in education, health, psychology and
other fields. http://www.tc.edu/news/views.htm “Views” pieces do not represent an
institutional TC stance; rather, they are meant to take thoughtful readers
beyond headlines and contentious debates toward gaining a deeper perspective on
complex issues. The first issue included unsolicited advice to New York City’s
new schools chancellor and the reactions of TC faculty members to the
controversial documentary film, Waiting for “Superman.” The next issue
will include stories on the proliferation of private money to fund public
education, and the recent rejection by Congress of The Dream Act, which would
have granted citizenship to undocumented illegal aliens who complete college or
two years of military service.

TC’s
third annual Academic Festival, on April 16th, will offer another
opportunity to reconnect with the College. www.tc.edu/festival
Our theme this year is “Learn and Live Well: Bringing Education to the Table,”
with presentations and panel discussions on the broad topic of wellness, from
human health to the culture of healthy organizations. We will again honor a
group of our most distinguished alumni in a range of fields.

I hope you will join us at Academic Festival. Meanwhile, I thank
you for your continued support of TC. By helping us to recruit talented,
ambitious students, by giving to our Annual Fund, and by carrying the TC banner
as ambassadors to the world, you collectively fortify our institution and renew
Teachers College as a place of excellence, innovation and hope.